The MIA was built with a few missing limbs. The original plan more closely resembles Versailles than the museum that was built, and it wasn’t long—about a decade, actually—before the MIA began to crave more room. In 1925, the museum sought to remedy this the same way it began: by throwing a dinner for wealthy  ...

It’s safe to say he was objectified: a hunk of flesh, chiseled and polished. In a museum full of objects, including a few idealized men, he was a living statue. The occasion was the 1985 Rose Fete, an annual public party that the MIA had held since 1959. In the early days, it was organized  ...

Some of the men in the portraits stand straight, their eyes alert. The medals decorating their freshly pressed uniforms shine under the studio lighting. Others seem disinterested in pageantry and pride, their ill-fitted military fatigues hardly adorned at all. One man brandishes an excessive number of medals and ribbons on the pocket over his heart.  ...

Some of the men in the portraits stand straight, their eyes alert. The medals decorating their freshly pressed uniforms shine under the studio lighting. Others seem disinterested in pageantry and pride, their ill-fitted military fatigues hardly adorned at all. One man brandishes an excessive number of medals and ribbons on the pocket over his heart.  ...

His smile says he knows how this looks. All those years of studying, squinting at dusty texts, the asthma. And now the payoff: after his 1936 lecture on “oriental architecture” at the MIA, three lovely ladies seeking his attention. Walter Agard was the lucky lecturer. He was a professor of classics at the University of  ...

Something has always been off. I grew up near Chicago, where the Art Institute is an institution. I’ve lived in St. Louis, where the St. Louis Art Museum is a beloved part of the even more beloved Forest Park. I’ve stood in line for the Louvre (and still had time to explore it). Yet my memories are rarely  ...

The images in the current exhibition “100+: A Photograph for Every Year of the MIA.” drawn from the museum’s collection, chronicle the century since the MIA was founded. Visitors were invited to share their own photographs and the stories behind them. Here are a few of these #tbt submissions, flashbacks to meaningful moments in their  ...

A lot of people didn’t think this ship would float. The Hjemkomst was built on the prairie, for one thing, in northwest Minnesota, far from any ocean or even a respectable lake. In fact, it was built in a former potato warehouse in Hawley, near Moorhead, by a junior-high guidance counselor named Bob Asp. It took  ...

In 1967, a semi-tractor trailer was loaded with a curated, museum-quality exhibition and sent out on the highways and byways of Minnesota. Occasionally, it would return to port, refill with art, and hit the blacktop again. Its 1968–69 exhibition of early American painters made 48 stops across the state, including the Red Lake Indian Reservation and Stillwater State  ...

This past week, everyone’s favorite online distraction has been How-old.net, which quickly guesses the age and gender of people in images you submit. It was created by Microsoft engineers to showcase the algorithms they’ve built, like face detection software. But it raises at least as many questions about our expectations of aging and gender, and  ...